Random Thoughts

This is one of those instances where I’ve been busier behind-the-scenes than up front and center on the blog. As you can see, the logos are done, are in place, and the rest of the site changed to match. Anne had a great idea of having a lighter color on one of the sidebars. I’m thinking about washing out the gold color and making the inner sidebar a pale gold. Now I have to figure out how to wash out colors. Were I using paint, I would add white. Not sure how to do that with Paint.Net.

I finished Joely Sue Burkhart‘s Survive My Fire. I’ll try to post the review by Tuesday. It will be my first-ever ebook review! I read Survive My Fire as a test read on my iPod touch. I thought of this book because Joely has been a longterm friend and supporter of this blog. It’s hard to pin down why I didn’t care for reading on the iPod. The text was clear and crisp. Scrolling was intuitive. The Stanza software was very easy to use, with a crisp typeface. But I still found it slightly uncomfortable.

So for now, I’m still not reading e-books, except for special circumstances that I will initiate.

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I’ve been having a conversational interview with Sonya Bateman, the author of the upcoming Master of None. I call it — somewhat redundantly — a conversational interview because I’m conducting it as a back-and-forth with the author, rather than emailing a list of questions and then making the poor author tackle them all at once. It’s easier on me, too, which is another perk. And I’m hoping it will be funner to read.

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I need to email a certain author to invite him to a Writer Wednesday. I meant to do that this weekend, and I remembered just now. This is why these weekly posts are a good thing — they remind me to do things. So I’m going to try to get that going.

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Books I’m reading:

The River King’s Road by Liane Merciel. This is an epic fantasy by a female author! And it’s not a young-boy-comes-of-age novel! The only underage characters are two infants and an almost-man who’s quite the villain. And guess what — you’re going to love this — one of the main characters is a young mother! Nursing two babies — her baby and a little baby who needs her! A baby who is also the heir to a stolen kingdom! And that kingdom is enemy of the mother’s kingdom!

Angelology by Danielle Trussoni. This is my first foray into supernatural thrillers. Normally, I would avoid a book about angels or demons like the plague, but this looked very well-researched and quite promising. I haven’t actually started it yet, but I need to read it right on the heels of The River King’s Road because the last time I checked, they both come out on the same day.

You can tell this book is a different genre by the presentation of the book, itself. Fantasies and science fiction usually have the pages cut smooth, but these are ragged. The color scheme isn’t in keeping with fantasies, either. The review copy came with a handy insert called, “A Field Guide to Angelology”. It defines terms such as angelology, and has the key players and important places. Nice touch. Normally, book swag like this goes on my wall, but this will stay with the book until I read it. Then, I’ll have to make room on my wall because it’s a full page.

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I’m still thinking about going to the Book Blogger Convention. My husband and I are talking about going together and taking the train up to see something other than I-95 on the way. The con is the reason I designed some logos for this site at last. At a con, you need business cards. I was trying to design some business cards when I realized that I needed a logo on it. Therefore, my site now has a logo. Even if I don’t go to the con, this blog will have benefited in this small way. And, when my blog comes up in conversations, I’ll have cards to hand out.

And I guess that’s all for now. See ya ’round the comments!